


Apologize

by orlesiantitans



Series: 100 Themes [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, I APOLOGIZE, Self-Hatred, butchering of the French language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 02:30:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5440148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orlesiantitans/pseuds/orlesiantitans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tries to break it off and she says no. He’s a weak man, he’s always known it, so he doesn’t protest as he should when she kisses him, asks if he regrets it.</p><p>The worst part is, he doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apologize

He tries to break it off and she says no. He’s a weak man, he’s always known it, so he doesn’t protest as he should when she kisses him, asks if he regrets it.

The worst part is, he doesn’t.

He should, Maker knows he should. She’s young and so, so soft beneath his fingers, and her lips are clumsy and inexperienced but his heart is blooming with something strange and new and tender and he leans into her, pressing her back into the railing.

He tries to apologize without words, his lips as tender as he can make them, his hands not questing from her back. She arches into him and lets out a soft gasp- his name, he realizes- and he pulls away.

“Goodnight, my Lady,” he says, and she looks confused and a little hurt but says nothing as he walks away.

He is glad. Even one word could break his weakening willpower.

He begins to see her more and more frequently, after that.

She turns up in his barn whenever she’s back in Skyhold- on the rare occasions she doesn’t take him- and often takes him around the back for a quick kiss. He tries to keep it short, chaste, so as to keep himself in check. More than once he’s had to stop her questing fingers from dipping too far under his tunic, and while she always looks a little bemused as she pulls away, she never asks.

She asks him one day if he does not desire her, and he attempts to reassure her with soft assurances that he does, doesn’t use the words ‘you deserve better’ even though they’re true, because he’s tried before and she’d just laughed and told him surely she should be allowed to decide what she deserves.

So he just tells her he wants to wait, for both of them, and she smiles softly and leans up to kiss him and tells him he’s ‘sweet’ and it breaks his heart.

When she walks away, her eyes drift downwards to look at her arse- with no small amount of guilt- and he sighs. He is anything but ‘sweet’.

He dreams of her every night. He’s back in Orlais, with orders and a promise of gold. The voices drift from the carriage- and this time his men don’t do it. He rips open the carriage door and stabs them- her and the two eerily familiar children who yell ‘papa’, entirely terrified.

He wakes with a scream, hands gripping the thin blanket he allows himself. Their eyes linger in his mind long after his breathing slows, wide and terrified and the same shade of blue he sees whenever his eyes catch a mirror.

He gets up and begins to work on his griffon again. He knows he’s not going to get any more sleep, not with memories and secret wishes twisting together and becoming corrupt.

More time passes, and he finds himself fall further for her. It’s shortly after Adamant that they go to Val Royeaux, on her insistence, to have dinner. He can feel eyes on him, watching him as he sits with her.

_L'inquisiteur et un roturier sale?_

The Inquisitor and a dirty commoner?

_Il est tellement plus vieux! Saviez-vous qu'elle a refusé le marquis du Puette pour lui?_

He is so much older! Did you know she turned down the Marquis du Puette for him?

Clearly, none of them know he is fluent in Orlesian, if rusty. She, for her part, seems to either ignore them or not understand, and for that he’s thankful. She may deserve better, but the thought of her with another man makes his stomach churn. He manages to find fault with each of them, despite the fact they were still better than him.

She must sense he’s not completely in the room with him, for she reaches across and takes his hand, squeezing it softly. He hears a scandalized gasp from a woman across the hall, but his attention is taken by someone else. A man across the room.

_Il paraît qu'ils ont obtenu l'un des hommes de Rainier. Cyril Mornay. Son exécution est prévue pour la mois prochaine._

His blood runs cold. It’s been a long time since he’s heard either name- Rainier or Mornay. He remembers his lieutenant well. The charming smile he’d had, flirting his way through the majority of the barmaids in Orlais with thrilling tales of how thrilling his life was. When he’d found out one of them had gotten pregnant he’d married her immediately.

He was a good man. An honest man who’d lost everything in service to a selfish, greedy man who he’d trusted. Blackwall wonders, briefly, what has happened to his wife and child. Probably long gone, leaving him as soon as his guilt came to light.

He lets out a breath. He has a week to get to Mornay and stop the execution. He’ll say goodbye to his lady love and then he’ll give his life for something noble. He’ll gladly welcome the death he should have met at the blade of a darkspawn years ago.

It’s only five days’ ride back to Skyhold, across the water on a small boat and back home again. He has a week or two, he figures, to say goodbye to her and walk to his death. She continues to come to him for stolen kisses, smiling at him so brightly, and he feels regret heavy in his heart.

He asks her to join him for a drink, in the end. It’s taken him longer than he thought to prepare himself to say goodbye, and by the time he gets up the guts he has a week left. He’d have to go as fast as his horse can be driven at this rate. She smiles and agrees and they sit in the tavern in awful, heavy silence before he tells her he feels he can do anything with her there.

He doesn’t tell her that includes riding to his death.

Her eyes shine and she tells him they should spend some time alone.

He’s kissing her, savoring the taste of her lips, and he feels her reach for the clasps of his armor. He makes one last, futile attempt to tell her he’s not worthy of her, stops short of begging her to stop, but he’s too far gone. He gives her the badge, and she holds it tight before placing it down and making damn sure he knows she wants him. He knows she won’t let him walk away, and so he kisses her again, backing her up against some bales of hay.

He kisses her slowly, languidly, and brings her over the edge with his fingers, his mouth, and finally he enters her. She flinches, a full body thing, and he sees pain clear on her face. He stares at her in shock, lips parted, and brings a shaking hand to his mouth. She reaches up to his cheek.

“You…” he begins, and she rolls her eyes.

“I’m not a virgin, Blackwall. It’s just… been a while. Move.”

He complies, and eventually they lie, sated and together for the first and last time. She’s curled into his side, and she lets out a sigh and tells him she knows he’s hiding something, but that she doesn’t care. When she falls asleep, he gets up and dresses on automatic, trying not to look at her body on the stacks, sleeping peacefully despite the occasional shiver. He leans down, presses a kiss to her brow.

“I’m sorry, love,” he whispers, and she makes some kind of mewl in her sleep, brow furrowing as she reaches up.

  
He leaves the barn and doesn’t let the tears free until he’s well out of Skyhold.

When he finally arrives in Val Royeaux, he has two and a half days until the execution. He sits in the hovel of a tavern, puts pen to paper, and writes. A letter of confession, of love, he’s not certain. Perhaps both.

_My lady Inquisitor,_

_Nothing I can say can possibly change what I’ve done. I doubt it can ease your pain. Just know that leaving you hurt me as much as I know it must have hurt you, and that I am going to regret it until the moment I’m a corpse._

_My name is not Blackwall. Warden Blackwall died a long time ago. He took a blow meant for me and was killed. The world lost a good man that day, and I decided that I couldn’t let it stand. I took his name just as surely as I took his life- if indirectly- and pretended. Like a child, I pretended to be someone I’m not._

_My real name is Thom Rainier. I was born in Markham, 8:96 Blessed, and I joined the Orlesian army when I was twenty one years old. At thirty nine, I was respected by my men and the crown. But it’s too easy to get caught up in that, and I took advantage of their trust. In 9:35, I took a deal that involved killing Lord Vincent Callier and all those travelling with him._

_I thought it would be a few retainers with him. I thought that would be all. I killed someone loyal to Celene, a few of his soldiers, made some coin._

_I was selfish, back then. But even then… if I’d known the truth I never would have agreed. Because Callier wasn’t travelling with retainers._

_He’d gone with his family to one of their estates. His wife and his four children. Maker, they were so young and I let them die._

_I’m so sorry. I wish I could have been the man you deserve. I did- I do love you. I always have, since you turned up in the Hinterlands and took me with you._

_With all my love,_

_~~Warden Bl~~ Thom Rainier_

He lies down in his bed and prepares to meet death. Two and a half days.

* * *

He is angry. _Furious_. He’s released and he’s angry and the Inquisition take him back to Skyhold without informing him why she let him live.

She sits in her throne before him, and he tries so hard to remind her that what she’s doing is wrong. She tells him he’s free and that she couldn’t let him go.

He kisses her and she responds, and he feels lighter than he has in a while, but also heavy. Lord Callier’s family weren’t getting the justice they deserve. But perhaps… perhaps with her there for him, he can atone.

That night, she holds him as he cries on her lap, arms tight around her waist, and he begs her forgiveness. Apology after apology spills from his lips. _I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry._

She presses her lips to the crown of his head and whispers, “Let go, Blackwall. Don’t carry them all with you. You can’t do that to yourself.”

He tries. For her. He can do anything with her at his side.


End file.
